Gabriel and Dennis wrote:
D:> Which brings us back to the theme I like to harp
D:> on. Could the Voynichese 'words' be syllables of
D:> a European language like French, Italian,
D:> German, Croatian, etc.?
G:> To my taste, there are too many different words,
G:> unless some of the words represent more than one
G:> syllable.
If the VMs words are syllables from a polysyllabic
language like the ones suggested by Dennis, then
we are faced with two problems. I tend to agree
with Gabriel that we should see fewer different
words in the MS.
Monosyllabic languages have invented tones
just to avoid the 'shortage' of words that would
otherwise arise.
The second problem is: the labels in the MS are
like all other words in the MS and it wouldn't
make much sense that these are only syllables,
i.e. parts of words, not whole words.
So if the VMs words are syllables, they should
belong to a mono-syllabic language.
Also that is not without problems. There are quite
a number of VMs words which seem really too long to
be mono-syllabic, but then again, mono-syllabic
languages can (and do) have loan words which are
polysyllabic.
Cheers, Rene
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